Getting the low-down on stormwater control

This week in Seattle, an international conference of engineers, government officials and others are swapping stories about how to best control stormwater by building cities so the foul concoction doesn’t run off hard surfaces like parking lots and streets to begin with.

Stormwater in SeattlePaul Joseph Brown/P-I

These “low-impact development” techniques actually aim to minimize the amount of hard surfaces (which, contrary to what you might think, can include your lawn.) Then they find ways to slurp up as much of the rest of it as possible. As we’ve written about, Seattle has even retrofitted part of a neighborhood to make it zero-discharge. And the city, along with Paul Allen’s Vulcan real estate firm, is planning a big swale in a part of its South Lake Union development that will suck up a big part of the rainwater running down from Capitol Hill.

And, of course, big cities in Western Washington are being forced to mandate these techniques as the region struggles to restore Puget Sound. Stormwater is the No. 1 source of many of the Sound’s worst pollutants.